Her body felt stiff and heavy. She craved sleep like air then, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't grasp it. Visions of her past continuously played out over and over on the insides of her eyelids, like mini-movies, when she closed them. Maybe she wanted them to, even if they were just part of some spell.
On her stomach now, with her cheek buried in her pillow, she found it too warm and turned it over to the cool side. She tossed the comforter off of her too and only left the thin bed sheet, and kicked off her socks, scooting up her pajama pant legs as she did. It felt like summer in her room.
Inside her eyelids, she now saw the lush lawn of Sunnydale Park again, with patches of white dandilions sprinkling the golf-course green expanse. It smelled like freshly cut grass and SPF 15 because of the nearby pool. Dawn remembered the awesome feel of the July sun pricking her shoulders, arms and bare legs, the breeze that weaved through her hair every once in a while. Digging her toes into the warm sandbox sand, and hitching herself up on the plastic swing seats. Grabbing onto the hot metal chains that made her hands smell like pennies. Tilting her head back to look at Buffy, who was getting in position to push her sky high.
Dawn dared her big sister to push her over the bar, told her she wanted to fly. Buffy tried her best, pushed her hardest, and their laughter resonated.
"Bet you can't push me all the way 'round!"
"Oh yes I can!"
"No you can't!"
That was back when Buffy wasn't such a butthole. The memories were sweet and sour. How could something that felt so real be... not? A mixture of wanting so badly to go back in time, and then realizing that the times never even occured was a repeated punch in the gut.
No one told her, no one ever planned on telling her. Only by chance did she find out for herself who, or what she was by breaking into the magic shop with Spike that night, finding the musty leather-bound books, deciphering Giles' doctor's-prescription-handwriting.
The book said something about crazies. Crazies went crazier when they were around her, scratching at their skin and moaning as if she was radioactive and their internal organs were melting just being in her vicinity. Until she read Giles's notebook, she'd always just thought they were an side-effect of living on the Hellmouth.
The dogs and serpents being able to sniff her out was a sign too. That giganto snake went right for Dawn's jugular before anyone else's.
Blah blah blah, energy, monks, protect a key, slayer, form of a sister... The key. Dawn was the key.
"Huh. I guess that's you, nibblet," Spike remarked unhelpfully, because he's Spike.
So, cutting herself with a birthday cake knife wasn't the smartest thing Dawn had ever done. She had never really envisioned herself as a person who'd do something like that just to see if she bled. The was pain was tangible, at least, but the thick red liquid dripping down her palm didn't provide the comfort she thought it might. She still wasn't real. Just a thing that bled.
"What am I?" she asked the room, anyone who would answer. Dawn sobbed desperately, "Am I real? Am I anything?"
Energy. A key. The key. Key to what? Glory said the key was this ooey gooey green blob of energy. Was there some freakish thing bouncing around inside of her? Was she a time bomb and when it was time for someone to have the key, when she was no longer needed, would she just be shed like snake skin? Or would it bust out of her, Alien-style? Was she the key herself, and was someone going to stick her in head a lock and spin her around?
Giles, Mom, Buffy -- they all knew about it. Dawn was the one who was kept in the dark. Well, not in the dark like her room, but dark as in knowledge. Her life was invented for her, and she was dropped in it head-first, born fully grown. Six months. She was six months old. Or thousands of years old, depending on how you looked at it.
Ancient, powerful beings shouldn't have to do homework, Dawn thought absently.
That next day at school was disgusting. How that beeyotch Kirstie found out she'd cut herself, she'd never know. When Miss Fox told her to settle down, telling her to "shut the fuck up" because she didn't know what she was going through was as non-smart as the cutting. Then there was nearly barbecuing the house with the trashcan bonfire in her room. And, of course, the running away, leaving the Scoobies on the hunt, Buffy hysterical.
Buffy called her "Dawnie" a lot lately, which was rare and kind of annoying. She called her Dawnie when she fell off her Barbie bike and scraped her knee, and had to have her mom spray that stuff that stings on the gash. She called her Dawnie when Goldie the goldfish, her very first pet, met Snickers the neighbor's cat. But Dawn was fourteen now. God, she wished everyone would stop treating her like glass. After all, she was older than all of Buffy and her friends combined -- except maybe Anya, but she didn't count.
The point was Dawn knew now, she'd stay away from birthday cake knives, and they didn't have to lie to her anymore. Regardless of the past, she existed now, as Dawn. She had a present and a future, and memories, good and bad. Memories are all of reality, after all.
There was a crack in the door, a thin vertical line of light that pierced her thoughts. Buffy's head broke the beam as she peered into the room and whispered. "Dawnie?"
Quickly, Dawn faked sleep. She'd mastered the art of fake sleeping early on, so she could trick Buffy into carrying her to her bed. Look in one direction. Don't let your eyelashes flutter. Keep a straight face. Take slow, deep breaths.
"Hey," Buffy said in a normal voice, sitting beside her. "Why are you doing that? It's pointless and a half. You're already in bed, and you're not six."
Dawn smiled before she opened her eyes. "Only took you eight years to figure me out."
"Yeah, well... shut up." Smiling too, half-asleep, Buffy stroked her hair and kissed her once on the forehead. "Sleeptime, okay?"
Dawn rolled her eyes and snuck underneath her comforter. "'Night."
"'Night, Dawn."
Dawn shooed the eyelid-movies away for the night. She fell asleep trying to decide who she liked more: Kevin, Xander, or Spike. Spike's cool hair and leather pants tipped the scale.